update on housing search

Time for a quick update on my housing search.  I have two main criteria for housing.  One is that my commute to work be 30 minutes or less.  The second is that the place has to be furnished.  I got rid of all my furniture when I left DC and don’t want to acquire any until I know if I’m going to stay in Portland for a while.  The second criteria really limits me.  Mostly I’ve been looking at places where I’d be renting a furnished room in a house where I’d share the rest of the house (living room, kitchen, etc) with other tenants. I haven’t had a roommate in about a decade so it’s a bit scary.  

So far I’ve looked at 4 places.   The first was a room in a house that I would have been sharing with the owner and his aunt.  I really liked the owner and the house was beautiful.  But the room was a bit small and there was a fair amount of car noise from a nearby street.  So I passed on that place.  

The second place was a 15 minute bus ride to work.  I would have been renting the upstairs bedroom in the house and would also have my own bathroom.  The house was nice looking but I didn’t care for the current tenant (who I would have been sharing the house with).  He was a nice guy but a bit weird.  Just couldn’t imagine sharing space with him.

 The third place was also the upstairs of a house.  I would have been sharing the house with the owner and her 13 year old daughter.  I really liked the owner but didn’t care for the idea of living in a house with a 13 year old.  

The fourth place is the place that I’ve decided to apply for.  It’s also the most private of the four.  Assuming I get it, I’ll be renting a fully furnished studio apartment with my own kitchen and bathroom.  So no roommate!  There is one quirk to the place.   The aparment is part of a house and get to the front door of the apartment, you go in the front door of the house and then walk past a living room and kitchen.  The living room and kitchen are part of an apartment that’s being rented by a family of five.  Their space is “open” so you can see right into their living room and kitchen as you walk past.  There’s also no stove in the apartment but I can use the stove in the family’s kitchen.  I’ll probably just end up buying a hot plate instead.  You can see photos of the place here:

http://portland.craigslist.org/mlt/roo/1067776297.html

A new, temporary home

I’m on the move again.  I’ve started looking for a place in Portland, but it’s been really difficult.  My round-trip commute to and from work is about 2 1/2-3 hours.  Making for 11+ hour days even without looking for a place to live.  Forunately, something quite unexpected happened the past few days.  I recently reconnected with someone who I took Spanish lessons with in Mexico last year.  Turns out that her and her fiance recently relocated to Portland.  They have an extra bedroom in their place.  They’re letting me move in with them and pay them week-by-week till I find something permanent (which hopefully won’t take more than a week or two).  Fortunately, it’s only about a 25 minute bus ride from their place to work.  Which will leave me a lot more free time to find a place.

okay, this is really, really weird…

So I keep thinking I’m done with this thing.  But something really odd happened at work today that I wanted to mention.  Actually, going back to Friday, I forgot to mention something…Kathleen, the co-worker who showed me around was actually born in Canton, OH, the same city I’m from.  (back when I worked for USDA, I had lots of co-workers from OH but since Virginia and Ohio are so close to one another it’s not that suprising).  Here in Oregon, I was definitely surprised to find someone so soon from my hometown.  But it gets stranger.

I was talking to a different co-worker today that it turns out that her parents are from…you guessed it…Canton, OH!!!  Oh but it gets stranger still.  Her parents actually went to the same high school I did.  In fact, it’s the same high school that my parents, many aunts and uncles and my grandparents went to.  In fact, it’s possible that one of her parents graduated from high school with my Aunt Marilyn.  What were the odds of that????  

One last thing….you may remember that back in Thailand I read a couple of books written by women who had survived the killing fields in Cambodia.  Well, it turns out one of my new co-workers is also a survivor.  While definitely a horrible experience, it sounds like what she experienced was nothing like what the book authors went through.  My new co-worker acutally knows one of the book authors – they went to college together in the US after escaping from Cambodia.

Back by popular demand…

Yeah, I know I said I was done posting.  But there seemed to be some interest in hearing how my first day at work went.  Fortunately, it wasn’t rearly as dramatic as my first day at work at USDA back in 1998.  That day made for quite a funny story (and yes Jo, there is a zipper involved in the story!).

Anyway, I left about 7:15 and picked up the bus.  I needed to switch buses but realized I hadn’t written the directions down properly so I had to wing it a bit.  But I still made it there by 8:30.  I soon realized that I had a slight problem.  My boss was out on Friday and she had told me to meet up with Kathleen, another staff member.  I had stopped by on Monday to fill out some paperwork and ran into Kathleen but forgot to ask what time she gets into the office.  So sure enough, she wasn’t in yet and I was told that she normally comes in around 9-10.  Great.

So I then asked if Tracie was in since I was told that she would have some more paperwork for me to fill out.  Unfortunately, she wasn’t in either.  Meanwhile, noone seemed to know where my cube was.  So I sat by the secretary’s desk, reading some materials.  Fortunately, Tracie came in about 5-10 minutes later.  Tracie was great.  She had me fill out a bunch of paperwork and also gave me a basic orientation and showed me around.

By the time Tracie was done with me, Kathleen had come in.  So I then met with Kathleen for a while.  We eventually figured out which cube was mine.  The previous occupant had left  a bunch of files behind and everyone was very apologetic over that.  I didn’t mind though since cleaning the cube gave me something to do.  In the process, I realized a bigger problem.  While there was a monitor and a keyboard in the cube, there was no computer.  By the time I left that issue still hadn’t been resolved. 

For lunch, I went out with Kathleen and 2 other co-workers.  After lunch, I spent most of the afternoon boxing up files that the previous occupant of my cube had left behind.  So far I have 14 boxes.  Eventually I ran out of boxes and will have to wait till Monday to finish the task (when hopefully the mail room will have more boxes).  Everyone that I met was really, really nice.

The one piece of bad news is that I found out we may be getting furlouged soon.  The governor is proposing 26 furlough days over the next 2 years.  That would amount to about a 4.5% pay cut.  I don’t mind the pay cut if it means extra days off.  But here’s the thing….the governor is proposing that 15 of the furlough days take place on state holidays.  Gee thanks!  So we’d get a pay cut but very little extra time off.  Of course, all this has to be negotiated with the union so time will tell what happens.

The other interesting thing is that the governor is proposing to cut his own salary by 5%.  The article mentioned what the governor’s salary is.  Get this….when I was working for USDA in DC, I was making more than the Governor of Oregon.  I knew salaries in Oregon were low, but that’s crazy!

The fun is over

Starting on Friday, my days of fun are over.  I’ll be starting my new job at the Oregon Department of Public Health as a Research Analyst.  I didn’t get the salary I wanted but it’s better than nothing.  If I wanted a higher salary, I probably would have needed to move to a different city.  And I’d really like to give Portland a try.  

Obviously Friday is an odd day to start on.  But the State of Oregon lets you start on any day.  And by starting on Friday, my health insurance will begin March 1st.  If I waited till next Monday to start, my health insurance wouldn’t begin till April 1st.  If you’re curious about what I’ll be doing, here’s a link to the job description.  Scroll down to the bottom to see duties and responsibilites.

http://www.oregon.gov/DHS/jobs/LEH88065.shtml

This will probably be my last post.  But I’ve said that before, haven’t I???